State Tells Anheuser-Busch to Pay $98,000 for Stream Spills

A state water panel Monday ordered Anheuser-Busch to pay $98,000 for conservation programs in the Sepulveda Basin wildlife refuge to compensate for two chemical spills last winter into a stream that flows through the area.

By a 5-0 vote, the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board earmarked the money for a consortium of groups, led by the Audubon Society, to use in restoring native vegetation and in outdoor education in the wildlife area.

Unless the company contests it, the order will resolve the battery of criminal and civil charges that followed the discharge last January and February of about 11,400 gallons of a caustic cleaning solution into a storm drain that flows into Haskell Creek.

Anheuser-Busch lawyers--who claimed the water board staff reneged on a prior agreement to settle the case for $55,000--would not say whether they will appeal the order to the State Water Resources Control Board. But the company has been eager to put the embarrassing episode behind it, and an appeal seemed unlikely.

The spills involved a sodium hydroxide solution that poured from the Anheuser-Busch brewery in Van Nuys into a concrete-lined storm channel, then flowed 2 1/2 miles to the wildlife area, where Haskell Creek becomes an earth-bottomed stream before emptying into the Los Angeles River. The second spill of the highly alkaline solution caused a small kill of frogs and fish, but apparently neither spill did lasting damage.

The payment would bring to $180,500 the amount from polluters set aside for environmental work in the 108-acre wildlife area--which includes a lake used by Canada geese and other migratory birds. The Audubon Society, which previously received $82,500 from fines against another polluter, last week announced that it would use part of the money to bring elementary school students to the wildlife area.

Audubon officials said the money will also be used to plant native vegetation and improve habitat.

“We are going to turn the Sepulveda wildlife area into a functioning ecosystem,” Bill Principe, director of Audubon’s Los Angeles chapter, said after Monday’s vote.

However, competition for the funds spawned resentment among usually like-minded groups.

Although Anheuser-Busch agreed months ago that any payment should go to Audubon, rather than into state coffers, a representative of TreePeople testified Monday that her group should get control of the money instead. And Dick Ginevan, chief park supervisor for the Valley region of the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks, which administers the basin, asked for $23,000 to improve maintenance and security in the wildlife area.

The board decided the $98,000 should go to an Audubon-led consortium of groups that will help decide how the funds will be spent.

In a separate criminal complaint stemming from the chemical spills, Anheuser-Busch last month pleaded no contest to a single misdemeanor count and agreed to pay $53,730.38.

In the civil complaint issued by the water board, which involved different sections of state law, the board’s staff initially proposed a penalty of $55,000. But when the giant brewer said it preferred to fund conservation projects rather than pay a penalty, the staff upped the ante, asking that the firm spend up to $124,000--the most it could be charged in the case.

The staff thought that the company should pay more in return for avoiding the stigma of a penalty, said Robert P. Ghirelli, executive officer for the regional board.

This “warranted additional monies being put on the table . . . certainly more than the $55,000 and approaching the $124,000,” he said.

The board ultimately decided on $98,000, after hearing company lawyers describe the spill-prevention measures they have taken since the mishaps.